


City of Souls

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 08:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16215581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Set late season 6 before The Unnatural, from the prompt Mulder & Scully make a wrong turn on the way back from a case and end up somewhere cool.





	City of Souls

He spits a seed out the window and turns to her. He’d rolled his sleeves up hours ago, flung his tie over the back seat. It might be the end of a California summer but the heat is unrelenting. Sweat prickles at the creases of his elbows. Immaculate in her seat, Scully’s still all business. Whole and upright.

“When was the last time you wore jeans, Scully?”

She doesn’t answer. He hates the silence.

The sign reads ‘It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma’. He waits for her reaction. Nothing. He drives. On each side there are cemeteries. She’s drinking water and looking out at the rows of uneven headstones. There are hills behind them, scratched brown from too much sun. Withered. He makes a mental note not look back too often.

“Scully, do you prefer Gunfight at the OK Corral, the 1957 classic western starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas or Tombstone, the 1993 remake starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer?”

He hears the creak of gristle in her neck as she turns towards him. There’s a tiny kink in her lips. Upwards. He lets out a slow breath.

“I haven’t seen either, although I understand the cast of each movie was stellar. Maybe you can invite me over for a classic western movie night, Mulder. We can drink beer in our Levis and talk like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.” She’s teasing him. And his skin stipples in appreciation.

“I see you with your hair tucked under a Stetson riding over the plains, outrunning and outshooting the outlaws, Sherriff Scully.”

Another cemetery looms ahead. Padgett is still a fresh nightmare. Her blood-soaked shirt stayed behind his eyes for weeks, a metallic tang tainted everything he ate. He felt empty. Hollowed out, just like the bloodied chests of the victims. Life scooped from them. Ribs yawed open, bones like gravestones in rows. When she is quiet, he still feels empty.

He blinks away the image and turns to her. She relaxes into a smile, plays with a strand of that glorious hair. Now, he sees autumn sun, tastes the burnt edges of pumpkins, feels in his limbs the strange looseness of holidays to come.

“Maybe we can spin our guns or crack our whips?” She’s still playing the game and his heart thrums. And then she laughs. God, he loves that sound. Like the pop of a vintage champagne cork, a surprise followed by perfection. “Mulder, why have we driven so many miles in the wrong direction?”

There’s another sign. Arrows to the town mall and the primary school and the Cypress Lawn – Nobel Chapel. He turns towards the chapel.

“This is the City of Souls, Scully. Colma. Population 1500 living residents and 1.5 million souls. In 1900, the city of San Francisco declared the land in the town too valuable for burying the dead. In 1914, they sent eviction notices to all the cemeteries ordering the dead to be removed and relocated. Colma was chosen as the ‘end of the line’ so to speak. And now there are 16 cemeteries here, including a pet cemetery.”

She leans towards him, adjusts her seatbelt. She’s still holding on to that smile. But he’s holding on to it tighter. Her cheeks are pink. “But why are we here?”

He doesn’t tell her he feels like he’s lost his soul and in some improbable way he imagines that staying here will fill him up with new life, will give him back some of what he’s given away this year. Just like that psychic surgeon stealing away people’s beating hearts, Diana has sucked the very core out of him with her unending support and her sly smiles. He feels her grip chafing at him, marking his skin so that Scully sees betrayal like a scarlet letter. He doesn’t tell her anything like that, although he should. He should declare his guilt to her so she can flog him with her righteousness. He doesn’t tell her, though.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to see where Joe DiMaggio is buried? Or Frank ‘the crow’ Crosetti? Wyatt Earp? Levi Strauss?” Her fingers rub across her plump lips. “I see you aren’t quite as into this as I am,” he says and she bestows a gentle shake of her head on him, one that’s accompanied by a quiet chuckle.

“I can’t say I am, Mulder but if you feel that visiting the graves of famous sports people or cowboys, is something you need to do, then knock yourself out. I’ll be happy with a cold beer and a steak. I’m hungry. And this town is making me crave dead meat.”

He laughs then. She’s funny, his Scully. She metes out her jokes in increments, measuring out the time between each beat so it’s not too long, not too short. She’s good with her timing, like that. Knows just when to step in, when to step back. He hasn’t learnt that yet. But this business with Diana has taught him that jumping in blindly, just for support of some kind, is not what he wants anymore. Not what he needs.

He turns into the cemetery, feels a shift in the air. It’s not mournful. There’s something serene about it, a quiet calm. It’s in the cooling of the harsh sun, it’s in the shush of the leaves, it’s in the melodic birdsong. The dead enjoy the longest rest, but the living can come here and reset.

She’s out of the car before him, shucking off her jacket and shielding her eyes from the lowering glare. California Scully is brighter in every way, he decides. Kaleidoscopic despite her penchant for black work-wear. Everything else about her is a melange of soft colours. He takes her in.

“Walk with me?” she asks and offers an elbow for him to hook his arm through. He wonders if she understands the irony of promenading around a cemetery while the dead lie still beneath them. He’s sure she does, but Scully doesn’t mind irony. She doesn’t like duplicity. She just doesn’t like being taken for granted.

He watches their shadows pass the headstones, long thin versions of themselves stretching out in some ghoulish representation of life. He needs to look back at her, see the tangible partner on his arm.

He tips his chin towards her. “Those who couldn’t pay the $10 eviction and relocation fee left their loved ones to be piled into mass graves.”

“It’s a cruel and undignified story,” she replies. “But death is often ugly.”

Her shirt was wicking bright red as quickly as her skin paled. He hesitated because in that moment he was sure she was gone, and he had let it happen. His fucking arrogance had led her to the terror of a death like that. Her beating heart stolen from its hearth right there in his own home.

The warm surprise of her fingers clasping through his shook the picture away, dissolving the stark of red death into the muted tones of Scully’s smiling face. She nods to a plaque on a large sculpted rock. He reads the details.

“When you were in that travel agency, with Duane Barry, I used this man’s case to highlight the potentially dangerous misreading of the situation. It’s one of the clearest memories I have of that time.”

He takes in the information as she speaks.

“The Gage Accident. Phineas Gage was working on the railroad at Vermont when a tamping iron blasted upwards and pierced his skull from cheekbone to top.” She touches the spots on her own face and he watches the grace of her fingers. “Miraculously, he survived but his behaviour changed so much that he was no longer the same man.”

It might not have taken an industrial accident to change him, but Scully’s ferocious charge for justice, right by his side, has been just as red hot. She has stayed on the same damned path, never deviating, while he’s pinballed from belief to doubt and all the while dragging her along with him. Exposing her to horrors. How has she remained the same? Fuck, he loves her for it. He loves her sameness, her unwavering Scully-ness. You know what you’re getting. You get what you see.

“I remember you talking about him,” he says. “I thought it would be good to see the memorial. And we really weren’t that far away. It seemed the right thing to do.”

She tucks her chin to her chest. “Well, it’s a very ‘us’ kind of thing to do, isn’t it? It’s a graveyard. It’s macabre. I’m only surprised that it’s not raining. It would be just the kind of after-case date we would indulge in.” She looks away quickly, licks her lips. “If this were a date.” The words are breathed out, low.

He looks around at the graves, thinks about the dead beneath them, lying silent in repose. Souls departed, bodies left behind. Bones desiccating to ashes. He thinks about Phineas Gage and Levi Strauss and Jo DiMaggio, how their lives are still known. He looks back at Scully and she’s waiting for him to speak. He can’t find any words to tell her how much he wants her life to be known for centuries to come. There’s a glint of sunlight off the brass of the plaque and he squints as it flashes in his face. He shivers but lets the sensation warm him, like heat from the inside, filling him.

“There’s a 50s style diner not far away,” he says, looking back at her face, where he sees hope, forgiveness and he feels his soul settle back inside. “Let’s get that steak, Scully.”


End file.
